Topic: Activity-dependent synaptic plasticity

Understanding how neural circuits process and interpret information can be challenging, as connectivity and activity continuously influence each other. Activity-dependent synaptic plasticity shapes and refines this intricate relationship. Connectivity motifs, small subnetworks of a few neurons, have been found to play a key role in linking circuit structure to the dynamical properties of neural activity, such as covariability and dimensionality. Significant progress has been made in measuring precise neural connectivity; multipatch experiments and recent connectomic studies have quantified thr

Activity-dependent synaptic plasticity is widely believed to play the major role in learning and memory. Moreover, the robustness of memories depends on the stability of synapses. Recent studies, however, have shown that synapses exhibit significant volatility which to some extent appears activity-independent [1]. This stochastic turnover therefore can put a challenge on encoding and preserving information in synaptic connectivity [2]. In this study, using in vivo STED nanoscopy, to assess the dynamics of morphological features of excitatory spines in mouse cortical circuits including the dyn